I made the mistake on Sunday of wasting $11 and an hour and a half of my lifr on the X-Files movie, I Want To Believe.

This movie was offensive in many ways -- not least in being heinously, unforgivably boring. Most egregiously, however, the film's villains are characterized in a way most unflattering to gay men and survivors of CSA.

The "plot" -- if you can call it that -- revolves around Mulder and Scully's search for a female FBI agent who has been kidnapped. We learn that her kidnapper has been in the habit of abducting people as sources of body parts used by evil Russian surgeons to keep the disembodied head of his husband alive. Yes, his husband: the movie makes a point of informing us that the two of them were married in Massachusetts.

Aiding them on this quest is a priest who has psychic visions -- and is also a pedophile convicted of raping 37 boys. To add to the fun, we learn that the diembodied head was one of the priest's victims.

Did they need to make the bad guys gay? Did they need to make one of them a CSA survivor? All of that is unnecessary to the "story" such as it is, and does nothing but reinforce offensive stereotypes.

Avoid this trash like the plague.

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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.~ Oscar Wilde

The media seems to get away with a lot of subltle and not so subtle gay bashing. Particularly when it comes to reenforceing offensive steriotypes. I get tired of that crap myself. How many movies or tv shows are there where the hero is gay?Doug

Like I said, I don't know about you, but I'm a mess in the morning before I get my severed heads.

We were both having painful movie night last night...I Netflixed "Mystic River." Good movie, and I cried for a while afterwards. But I hated it.

The movie version: A boy is shoved into a car. Shots of a basement, flashes of what happened, the escape. Then the screen goes black and fades up again and he's played by Tim Robbins, shuffling through his house, moving like a zombie, speaking with a voice from the crypt. Everything in his life is the result of those four days, and the message, hammered OVER and OVER again is that he really died after getting in that car.

I don't tell most people what happened to me. Yes, I clam up inside and doubt that it's that bad. But more, I'm afraid someone will read my story as the "Hollywood revelation" -- and think THAT's the answer to who I am. It's not. It's part of a whole history, a whole life.

I'm not dead now. And I'm NOT just a by-product of the terrible scene starring a kid in the first ten minutes of the film.

Angry now. Need more body parts. Mmmm.

P.S. I'd like the next pundit who describes abuse as "soul destroying" to look me in the eyes and explain why they think they have a soul and I don't.

The very essence of capitalist civilization is alienation, in which complex of relations that define our society serve to tear the human being away from his neighbors, from the labor of his hands, from his very self.

All of our souls are being destroyed as we speak, ground down every day between the wheel of history and the stone of economics.

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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.~ Oscar Wilde

P.S. I'd like the next pundit who describes abuse as "soul destroying" to look me in the eyes and explain why they think they have a soul and I don't.

*HUFF* Well yer supposed to believe what Hollywood and CNN say about victims of childhood sexual abuse. I mean duh! Everyone knows it turns the kid into a sex-crazed, evil killer with no soul. They even said it on Law & Order SVU!!! And you know...they have technical consultants.

i really liked the x-files when i was younger, i haven't seen the new film, is the priest you are talking about the big guy who was in one of the series before, the huge spiritual guy who looks odd? and is kind of magical?

anybody who thinks half of the things that films try to tell you about victims of abuse are morons, i hold onto the hope that most people have brains inside their heads and don't believe the crap they are fed

MV, my sympathies. I saw that movie too and was depressed for days. It really does seem like it's made to be the most depressing movie a survivor could possibly watch. What's hollywood trying to do? Make us slash our wrists?

You know what pisses me off? (well, i can imagine my bretheren here could give several well-educated guesses, heh)I never was an X-Files or Chris Carter fanatic, but, um, WHAT? the series was entertaining enough, and the 1st big-screen venture was forgivable, since i never took the show too seriously... but introducing plot/character elements of that nature w/o trying to address them seriously? Um, NO. I honestly don't care how readers of this post feel about Greys, HAARP, cattle mutilations, Linda Moulton Howe's credibility, or any of the the other "real-life" topics usually bandied about in regards to Scully, Mulder @ co., To take CSA, and bring it anywhere what should be the modern era's version of "Twilight Zone"-esque contemplation of our place in the grand scheme of things is just plain wrong. I might rent it eventually, just to double-check if i need to post a further reply in the vein of "Hey, VL, what for you say movie bad? Me like!" Somehow, right now, i don't feel the urge to double-check ya. Especially w/ all the comments following the initial post.Also, MV- I thought "Mystic River" warn't too bad- the hopelessness of Tim Hutton's portrayal reminded me of people i knew growing up- kinda overdone, but only now do i know why John and Donny were so eager to meet me at the Pit in Harvard Sq., coming all the way from Weymouth on the weekends. I even offered to meet them in Braintree or Quincy... nope. Like attracts like, i guess. I never said, they never said anything, but i guess we all needed to get away and try to find ourselves on our own terms. I never had generations of cops, firemen, or priests looking over my shoulder in my family, but they loved hanging out w/ me for that very reason. Their families seemed to be all about keeping your mouth shut,whatever happened; I would party with hese guys , but we would all get quiet when it came to why we hung around so much. What is it about New England, we all seem too good at keeping quiet about ugly things?

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Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speakWhispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.

I don't know. I'm not gay, but I am a survivor; yet still, I can't get to upset over this.

I remember watching a movie called "Stand and Deliver". The topic of racism, amongst other things, figures into the movie. At one point, one of the characters says, "There's two kinds of racism: singling out a person because he's a minority, and NOT singling out a person because he's a minority".

This is pertinent, I think, because although gay people are often lampooned by Hollywood, this is the first and only instance I can ever recall of a gay person actually being depicted as a "villain". Perhaps there are others - but I would not say that "gay people being stereotyped as evil by Hollywood" is something that happens often enough to be a concern. Gay people are typically depicted as comic relief. I'd be more concerned about -that-. Hollywood is only starting to include gay characters in other, more complex roles, and I think that's good. The antagonist - the Head Villain - is a very complex role in a well-made film.

I watched the X-Files occasionally when it ran on TV; I never had a problem with it. I only had a problem with the majority of its fan base, which takes the subject matter depicted on the show entirely too seriously. Maybe that's why my favorite episode of the show is one in which the show is essentially making fun of itself.

But no, I don't believe this movie will make people think of homosexuals as villains, and I don't think it will make people think that abuse victims are destined to become evil disembodied heads.

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Children cannot consent; they can only comply.

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